It's not rocket science

[Juvenal]

Hard Fork Podcast, Nov 11
A Verified Mess: Turmoil from Twitter to FTX

I found a google link for those who don't subscribe to the podcast. The Twitter segment leads off and goes on for 19 minutes. This is the best hot take I've seen on the ongoing meltdown over there.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a full-on Elon fan. I love Tesla and his solar ventures. I love his space ships. But this ain't rocket science.

A lot of his success is likely due to his inability to act like a normal, rational human. That's not going to work here.

This week he announced usage at Twitter is at historical highs. He's a little less open about the fact half his new users are blue-check verified parody accounts identifying themselves as Elon Musk. Pretty much everybody in the C suite who wasn't fired last week abandoned ship on their own this week. He lost his privacy chief, his security chief and his content moderation people.

While he's laughing about Super Mario flipping everyone the bird and banning anyone parodying him, users blue-check-verified as major brands are hurling profanities. This would be a good spot for someone normal, someone with national recognition and respect in the advertising community, to talk down the advertisers who naturally want nothing to do with this.

Twitter Loses Its Top Liaison to Advertisers as Sarah Personette Resigns
.

Twitter chief customer officer Sarah Personette said in a tweet last Thursday morning, in response to new owner Elon Musk’s tweet to advertisers that same day, that the company’s “continued commitment to brand safety for advertisers remains unchanged,” and she was looking forward to the future.

As it turns out, that future didn’t last very long.

Personette, Twitter’s main liaison to the advertising community, tweeted Tuesday morning that she resigned from the company last Friday, bringing more change to a C-suite that saw the firings of CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, legal, public policy and trust and safety lead Vijaya Gadde and general counsel Sean Edgett late last Thursday night.

As if that wasn't enough. Language warning:

Does Twitter Have Any Employees Left Who Remember That The Company Is Under A Strict Consent Decree With The FTC?
.

Yesterday I tweeted out a question about whether or not there was anyone left at Twitter who remembered that the company was under a pretty strict FTC consent decree:

Apparently the answer was yes, but they didn’t include Elon Musk. Late last night, a few hours after that tweet, the Chief Information Security Officer, the Chief Privacy Officer, and the Chief Compliance Officer all quit, apparently citing potential FTC violations as the reason. Lea Kissner, the former CISO tweeted about it early this morning:

According to the Verge, Elon and his entourage have made it clear that he doesn’t give a [omitted] about the FTC. It details a note on an internal Twitter Slack from a company lawyer:

Let's leave it that Musk doesn't think he's answerable to the FTC. Oh yes, he is, and so are his security officers, which is why they all quit. And that's just the US regulatory side of the picture. The US might as well be wild west in comparison to the EU regulators, and they require a named Privacy Officer in charge of communications with them.

This is not going to end well.

[Sparko]

Sounds more like the left are the one's melting down to me. Sure Elon is a bit of a troll, but the reaction of the left is way out of bounds. It's basically just like their reaction when Trump won the election or their "Democracy is on the ballot!" hysteria leading up to the midterm elections. A bunch of whiny drama queens.

And exactly how is he wanting to monetize the blue check mark going against the FTC? It has nothing to do with using personal info to target ads to users which is what the FTC restrictions were about.

[Juvenal]

Sounds more like the left are the one's melting down to me. Sure Elon is a bit of a troll, but the reaction of the left is way out of bounds. It's basically just like their reaction when Trump won the election or their "Democracy is on the ballot!" hysteria leading up to the midterm elections. A bunch of whiny drama queens.

Thank you for your thoughts.

Others, likely better informed than you, have noted how the advertiser pause is not leftist, as Elon would have it, but a question of brand safety.

ELON MUSK TO MEET WITH TWITTER ADVERTISERS TO DISCUSS BRAND SAFETY

The uptake from that meeting organized and led by his recently departed advertising chief was that his "trolling" put their brands at risk. The meeting was a disaster. When he whined about their reaction on twitter, he was reminded of this by one of the participants that advertisers were objecting to his cavalier attitude toward brand safety. His reaction to the reminder was to block the participant.

Follow him.

And exactly how is he wanting to monetize the blue check mark going against the FTC? It has nothing to do with using personal info to target ads to users which is what the FTC restrictions were about.

They're under a consent decree with the FTC requiring them to fully vet any new initiatives for privacy concerns. As detailed above ...
.

Late last night, a few hours after that tweet, the Chief Information Security Officer, the Chief Privacy Officer, and the Chief Compliance Officer all quit, apparently citing potential FTC violations as the reason.

Nobody wants to risk prosecution to appease a boss seemingly intent on burning $44 billion in a public tantrum.

[Machinist]

Something really weird going on with all these mega billionaires. Elon making this sketchy investment of 44B , now Bezos is giving away all his money...

[Sparko]

Musk has Asperger's which could explain his lack of understanding of social mores and conventions, leading to his acting out and trolling. He seems emotionally a juvenile. I do think he needs to stop with the trolling and act professionally. He should just put someone in charge of Twitter, give them their marching orders and step back.

[Bill the Cat]

Blue checks aren't verified accounts any longer. Once people get that, they can move on. The people resigning will be replaced by others in no time at all. This is hilarious to me. Anyone who gets their reality from Twitter is getting exactly what they deserve.

[Mountain Man]

Sounds more like the left are the one's melting down to me. Sure Elon is a bit of a troll, but the reaction of the left is way out of bounds. It's basically just like their reaction when Trump won the election or their "Democracy is on the ballot!" hysteria leading up to the midterm elections. A bunch of whiny drama queens.

And exactly how is he wanting to monetize the blue check mark going against the FTC? It has nothing to do with using personal info to target ads to users which is what the FTC restrictions were about.

The funny thing is, Twitter employees were already in the habit of quietly accepting bribes to bestow the coveted blue checks to people's accounts. Of course now that Musk is charging openly, liberals have a problem with it.

[Juvenal]

Musk has Asperger's which could explain his lack of understanding of social mores and conventions, leading to his acting out and trolling. He seems emotionally a juvenile.

Pretty much the definition of someone who shouldn't be running a social media company.

I do think he needs to stop with the trolling and act professionally. He should just put someone in charge of Twitter, give them their marching orders and step back.

You're in a good company there, with the exception that no, he can't be issuing marching orders here, either.

There's no rescuing the financial damage he's done to himself by his poor planning with more of the same. He needs to step aside entirely and let the professionals take the field. He's great at spaceships, innovating by moving fast, letting things break, and fixing them, but this is not rocket science. You can't bust a major brand's reputation, sweep into the trash, and try again. Security, privacy, and compliance aren't things you can afford to let break in social media. Free speech is not a license to put people's lives at risk.

https://mobile.twitter.com/LouPas/st...70131383603200

Dear @elonmusk
In the 14 days you’ve been “chief twit” you’ve severely damaged @twitter, some think irrevocably. I hope that’s not true, but, increasingly, I fear it is. It’s clear that leading Twitter is not among your many talents. I would like to offer five suggestions:

1) Install a seasoned CEO with an understanding of how advertising works and experience running a global enterprise.
2) Step out of any day to day role (i.e. “chief twit”) at @Twitter and broadly empower the new CEO to operate independently from you. 2/

3) Take out full page ads (yes, ads) in major publications apologizing for the damage you’ve done to @Twitter’s infrastructure, talent pool, user safety and advertising business. Introduce your new CEO and commit to stepping entirely away from operational decisions going forward.

4) Schedule meetings with as many Fortune 500 CEO’s as you can, along with your new CEO, and assure them that you are stepping out of the leadership role at @Twitter
and, in so doing, assure them that the reputational risk that you’ve introduced for advertisers will abate. 4/

5) Recognize that in the interim between today and bringing in your new CEO, that your two most important assets are your team at Twitter and the relationships they have with advertisers. Empower them, get out of their way and don’t saddle them with making good on the financial

consequences of your overpayment for @Twitter. That’s now become a decade long strategic problem that will take a disciplined plan, flawless execution, a rebuilding of trust, a restoration of effective verification and content moderation and ad product innovation. 6/

In closing, @elonmusk, many of us empathize with you. You thrust yourself into uncharted territory with a little push from the Delaware Chancery Court, and are now dealing with a constellation of variables that are unfamiliar to you. 7/

As you have been with business challenges that you faced in the past, you are confident in your ability to think your way past a challenge and come up with the answer in your brilliant brain. That confidence is more than warranted given the tremendous business and financial… 8/

…success you’ve achieved to date. Twitter is different than what you’ve encountered before. Twitter is not rocket science, it’s much harder than that. In engineering, there is always a precisely right solution that can be calculated because the laws of math are immutable. 9/

Leading @twitter, however, requires an appreciation for the nuances of everything from local culture to global culture, an ability to appreciate how the platform can enable special-interests to make the world better and protect the world from those who want to make it worse. 10/

A recognition that the very laudable goal of freedom of speech comes with a responsibility to keep all of your users safe from hate-speech, misinformation and fear of reprisal. You must have both or you cannot have either. These are time-consuming, at times tedious issues. 11/

It’s my assessment that you are destined for greater things then trying to navigate these nuances, set policy for content moderation or determining who is banned from the platform. Recognize that, install an empowered CEO and go onto the next big thing that you will achieve. 12/

@elonmusk, we all want Twitter to succeed and to continue as a tremendous global service. By extension of that, we are rooting for you too. The best thing you can do is to install the best leader you can and step away from the helm of @Twitter. Lou Paskalis Loyal Twitter user

Following the path he's charting, Twitter will fold. As he's taken it private, I'm not sure if it's eligible for a government-imposed conservatorship. They've now lost their entire leadership team. He's brought some Tesla engineers over to look over the code, but that's not going to put a finger in the dyke. No one is left there who knows anything about running a social media platform.

Everyone he hasn't fired has quit.
.

Even more #receipts. In two weeks, @elonmusk has driven off or fired the entire leadership team:

[Juvenal]

Blue checks aren't verified accounts any longer. Once people get that, they can move on. The people resigning will be replaced by others in no time at all. This is hilarious to me. Anyone who gets their reality from Twitter is getting exactly what they deserve.

The blue check verification initiative is over. It didn't work. And there's no possibility he's going to able to hire a new compliance officer who's willing to jail for him.

Former Chief Security Officer Of Uber Convicted Of Federal Charges For Covering Up Data Breach Involving Millions Of Uber User Records
.

In finding Sullivan guilty, the jury concluded he obstructed justice, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1505, and that he committed misprision of felony (i.e., knew that a federal felony had been committed and took affirmative steps to conceal that felony), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 4. Sullivan faces a maximum of five years in prison for the obstruction charge, and a maximum three years in prison for the misprision charge. However, any sentence following conviction would be imposed by the court after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 3553.

No advertiser is going to put up with being impersonated on a platform they need to trust to sell their brands. The general user, and Elon, and you, may find this amusing, but without their advertisers, Twitter is toast.

[CivilDiscourse]

Pretty much the definition of someone who shouldn't be running a social media company.



You're in a good company there, with the exception that no, he can't be issuing marching orders here, either.

There's no rescuing the financial damage he's done to himself by his poor planning with more of the same. He needs to step aside entirely and let the professionals take the field. He's great at spaceships, innovating by moving fast, letting things break, and fixing them, but this is not rocket science. You can't bust a major brand's reputation, sweep into the trash, and try again. Security, privacy, and compliance aren't things you can afford to let break in social media. Free speech is not a license to put people's lives at risk.

https://mobile.twitter.com/LouPas/st...70131383603200

Dear @elonmusk
In the 14 days you’ve been “chief twit” you’ve severely damaged @twitter, some think irrevocably. I hope that’s not true, but, increasingly, I fear it is. It’s clear that leading Twitter is not among your many talents. I would like to offer five suggestions:

1) Install a seasoned CEO with an understanding of how advertising works and experience running a global enterprise.
2) Step out of any day to day role (i.e. “chief twit”) at @Twitter and broadly empower the new CEO to operate independently from you. 2/

3) Take out full page ads (yes, ads) in major publications apologizing for the damage you’ve done to @Twitter’s infrastructure, talent pool, user safety and advertising business. Introduce your new CEO and commit to stepping entirely away from operational decisions going forward.

4) Schedule meetings with as many Fortune 500 CEO’s as you can, along with your new CEO, and assure them that you are stepping out of the leadership role at @Twitter
and, in so doing, assure them that the reputational risk that you’ve introduced for advertisers will abate. 4/

5) Recognize that in the interim between today and bringing in your new CEO, that your two most important assets are your team at Twitter and the relationships they have with advertisers. Empower them, get out of their way and don’t saddle them with making good on the financial

consequences of your overpayment for @Twitter. That’s now become a decade long strategic problem that will take a disciplined plan, flawless execution, a rebuilding of trust, a restoration of effective verification and content moderation and ad product innovation. 6/

In closing, @elonmusk, many of us empathize with you. You thrust yourself into uncharted territory with a little push from the Delaware Chancery Court, and are now dealing with a constellation of variables that are unfamiliar to you. 7/

As you have been with business challenges that you faced in the past, you are confident in your ability to think your way past a challenge and come up with the answer in your brilliant brain. That confidence is more than warranted given the tremendous business and financial… 8/

…success you’ve achieved to date. Twitter is different than what you’ve encountered before. Twitter is not rocket science, it’s much harder than that. In engineering, there is always a precisely right solution that can be calculated because the laws of math are immutable. 9/

Leading @twitter, however, requires an appreciation for the nuances of everything from local culture to global culture, an ability to appreciate how the platform can enable special-interests to make the world better and protect the world from those who want to make it worse. 10/

A recognition that the very laudable goal of freedom of speech comes with a responsibility to keep all of your users safe from hate-speech, misinformation and fear of reprisal. You must have both or you cannot have either. These are time-consuming, at times tedious issues. 11/

It’s my assessment that you are destined for greater things then trying to navigate these nuances, set policy for content moderation or determining who is banned from the platform. Recognize that, install an empowered CEO and go onto the next big thing that you will achieve. 12/

@elonmusk, we all want Twitter to succeed and to continue as a tremendous global service. By extension of that, we are rooting for you too. The best thing you can do is to install the best leader you can and step away from the helm of @Twitter. Lou Paskalis Loyal Twitter user

Following the path he's charting, Twitter will fold. As he's taken it private, I'm not sure if it's eligible for a government-imposed conservatorship. They've now lost their entire leadership team. He's brought some Tesla engineers over to look over the code, but that's not going to put a finger in the dyke. No one is left there who knows anything about running a social media platform.

Everyone he hasn't fired has quit.
.

Even more #receipts. In two weeks, @elonmusk has driven off or fired the entire leadership team:

Honestly, I don't care. Don't use twitter. It'll be interesting where political social media goes. Twitter was the "it" space for hot takes, over-reactions, and what not when it came to political news. With all the celebrities now scattering to the 4 winds it's going to be hard to replace twitter.

In addition, the fun part was watching all the people who said they don't believe in censorship leave because either A. Musk wasn't going to censor like old-twitter did or B. was going to use twitter in all the ways they denied twitter was possibly being used for before.

[Bill the Cat]

The blue check verification initiative is over. It didn't work. And there's no possibility he's going to able to hire a new compliance officer who's willing to jail for him.

Former Chief Security Officer Of Uber Convicted Of Federal Charges For Covering Up Data Breach Involving Millions Of Uber User Records
.

In finding Sullivan guilty, the jury concluded he obstructed justice, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1505, and that he committed misprision of felony (i.e., knew that a federal felony had been committed and took affirmative steps to conceal that felony), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 4. Sullivan faces a maximum of five years in prison for the obstruction charge, and a maximum three years in prison for the misprision charge. However, any sentence following conviction would be imposed by the court after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 3553.

No advertiser is going to put up with being impersonated on a platform they need to trust to sell their brands. The general user, and Elon, and you, may find this amusing, but without their advertisers, Twitter is toast.

Do you have any idea how many major corporations are breached every year? Advertisers will adapt to different advertising models on Twitter because faces are in front of it. Data breaches rarely cause long term lack of advertising revenue. And I can guarantee Elon will have a new compliance officer within the month. If the money is good and the golden parachute is big enough, they'll bite.

[Sparko]

From what I read, the blue checks were still going to mean the person was verified, but they would have to pay a monthly fee to maintain that status. Or he was going to add a "paid" and a "paid and verified" categories.

[Cerebrum123]

Thank you for your thoughts.

Others, likely better informed than you, have noted how the advertiser pause is not leftist, as Elon would have it, but a question of brand safety.

ELON MUSK TO MEET WITH TWITTER ADVERTISERS TO DISCUSS BRAND SAFETY

The uptake from that meeting organized and led by his recently departed advertising chief was that his "trolling" put their brands at risk. The meeting was a disaster. When he whined about their reaction on twitter, he was reminded of this by one of the participants that advertisers were objecting to his cavalier attitude toward brand safety. His reaction to the reminder was to block the participant.

Follow him.



They're under a consent decree with the FTC requiring them to fully vet any new initiatives for privacy concerns. As detailed above ...
.

Late last night, a few hours after that tweet, the Chief Information Security Officer, the Chief Privacy Officer, and the Chief Compliance Officer all quit, apparently citing potential FTC violations as the reason.

Nobody wants to risk prosecution to appease a boss seemingly intent on burning $44 billion in a public tantrum.

Yet those same companies are burning billions on projects that are destroying their own well known IP's by actively trolling their fans* all so they fall in line with ESG scores. The amount of money burned by many of these same advertisers dwarfs $44 billion by orders of magnitude, yet they still persist in going that route. Having tantrums to "promote" various products is par for the course these days, like Brie Larson and her remarks about Captain Marvel, the recent Black Panther Wakanda Forever stunt, all of the Star Wars sequel trilogy movies, and Amazon's The Rings of Power. All of these products have actively attacked would be fans and movie goers**, and did so to support their agenda. They are losing money hand over fist, but yet they keep using the same tactics, it's almost as if they don't care what makes them money at this point.

*Like Disney's She-Hulk tv show which the writers say was intentionally written poorly in attempt to "own the trolls". Given their writing the "trolls" they were trying to "own" were anyone who liked previous She-Hulk or the MCU in general, and anyone who likes the new one is apparently incredibly stupid because they can't see the blatantly obvious bad writing.

**Like calling people racist bigots for wanting shows/movies to be faithful to the source material, or saying the movie wasn't meant for "white men", or saying anyone who doesn't like the new movies are misogynists.

[alaskazimm]

Yet those same companies are burning billions on projects that are destroying their own well known IP's by actively trolling their fans* all so they fall in line with ESG scores. The amount of money burned by many of these same advertisers dwarfs $44 billion by orders of magnitude, yet they still persist in going that route. Having tantrums to "promote" various products is par for the course these days, like Brie Larson and her remarks about Captain Marvel, the recent Black Panther Wakanda Forever stunt, all of the Star Wars sequel trilogy movies, and Amazon's The Rings of Power. All of these products have actively attacked would be fans and movie goers**, and did so to support their agenda. They are losing money hand over fist, but yet they keep using the same tactics, it's almost as if they don't care what makes them money at this point.

*Like Disney's She-Hulk tv show which the writers say was intentionally written poorly in attempt to "own the trolls". Given their writing the "trolls" they were trying to "own" were anyone who liked previous She-Hulk or the MCU in general, and anyone who likes the new one is apparently incredibly stupid because they can't see the blatantly obvious bad writing.

**Like calling people racist bigots for wanting shows/movies to be faithful to the source material, or saying the movie wasn't meant for "white men", or saying anyone who doesn't like the new movies are misogynists.

While in the same breath whine that white men aren't paying to see said movie. It's really mind boggling the double think that the SJWs can hold in their heads.

[NorrinRadd]

Twitter going away would be one of the best possible things for the world.